Quotes on War

Quotes on War

You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be who you tire of it. Ho Chi Minh

War never leaves a nation where it found it. Edmund Burke

I look upon the whole world as my fatherland, and every war has to me the horror of a family feud. Helen Keller

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large number and to the sound of trumpets. Voltaire

The grass-roots support is not there. And we have to prevent it from developing again. Brigadier General Jack Farris, about the Vietnam War

Terrorism has become the systematic weapon of a war that knows no borders or seldom has a face. Jacques Chirac

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrows. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars on poverty are fought to map change. Muhammad Ali

The spirit of war can never be destroyed by all the butcheries and persecutions the human mind can invent. William Whipper

Peace is the exhaustion of strife, and is only secure in her triumphs in being in instant readiness for war… Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

A life without fighting is a dead sea in the universal organism. Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Make wars unprofitable and you make them impossible. A. Philip Randolph

War is never fatal but always lost. Gertrude Stein

Ambition is the grand enemy of all peace. John Cowper Powys

Trees, though they are cut and lopped, grow up again quickly, but if men are destroyed, it is not easy to get them again. Pericles

You can’t say civilization don’t advance…for in every war they kill you in a new way. Will Rogers

The law is silent during war. Cicero

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead. William Shakespeare

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Winston Churchill

War is the business of barbarians. Napoleon Bonaparte

God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions. Voltaire

The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Ideas are the great warriors of the world, and a war that has no ideas behind it is simply brutality. James A. Garfield

Soldiers win battles and generals get the credit. Napoleon Bonaparte

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. Dwight D. Eisenhower

Frankly, I’d like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry. Joseph Heller

In peace the sons bury their fathers and in war the fathers bury their sons. Francis Bacon

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die. Herbert Hoover

It is well that war is so terrible we would grow too fond of it. General Robert E. Lee

It is always easy to begin a war, but very difficult to stop one, since its beginning and end are not under the control of the same men. Sallust, first century, B.C.

The quickest way of ending war is to lose it. George Orwell

There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell. General William T. Sherman

Nothing in life is as exhilarating as to be shot at without result. Winston Churchill

History is filled with wars which everybody knew would never happen. Enoch Powell

It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement. Henry Ward Beecher

But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents. Joseph Heller

War may make a fool of man, but it in no means degrades him; on the contrary, it tends to exalt him, and its net effects are much like those of motherhood on women. H. L. Mencken

The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten. Calvin Coolidge

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder. William Golding, on the influence of his wartime naval service

There are no “white” or “colored” signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle. John F. Kennedy

In this age when there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war, we must recognize the obligation to match national strength with national restraint. Lyndon B. Johnson

I have a rendezvous with Death at some disputed barricade. Alan Seeger

You’re not here to die for your country. You’re here to make those so-and-so’s die for theirs. General John H. (Iron Mike) Michaelis, in Korea